The Rockville GCOM meeting is held at Dream Wizards , and this week was a special session to teach anyone in attendance how to play El Grande (Hans im Gluck & Rio Grande Games designers: Wolfgang Kramer & Richard Ulrick), in celebration of it's return to press. Attendance was much lower than normal since it was a special session and not many of the regulars made it.

In Attendance:
Laurel (Owner of Dream Wizards)
Doug (Employee of Dream Wizards)
David (That'd be me)
Steve (Host)
Mark (With his new, correct name!)

Doug was the one who had played before, but it had been some time for him, so it was a refresher there. (Mark showed up a little late, so only Doug, Steve, Laurel, and David played El Grande.)

The game started with us admiring the nice bits that make up this game. The castillo (Castle) is very attractive, sturdy wood. The playing pieces themselves are the industry standard 3/8" basswood cubes. There is also a 3/4" cube for each player that represents that player's Grande (nobleman).
The nicely painted cubes and the castillo, are complemented by colorful, well-laid out cards and a beautifully painted 4-fold board.

We took a few minutes to go over the rules and set up the game. Each round of the game consists of two phases. In phase one, players bid cards to determine the play order for the second phase. The higher the bid, the lower the secondary benefit of being able to advance some of your pieces (called caballeros) from the reserve (provinces) into the play area (courts).

Once the play order is determined by the bidding, each player takes his turn, starting with the selection of an action card. Then they may do 2 things, and they can do either one first: use the special ability on the card, and move caballeros from the courts onto the board.

Caballeros are what get you points, so it is important to get them onto the board. They can only be played in one of the regions that is adjacent to the marker for the king.

Play of the game was very quick, and we completed in about 90 minutes. If we had been more familiar with the game, I am sure it would have been less than an hour.

In the end, Doug trounced us all handily, scoring well over 100 points. Steve was in the mid to low 80's, Laurel in the mid to low 70's and I brought up the rear with about 60 points. In my defense, they were all
occupying the four spots with 5's on them, so the early introduction of both of the special ability cards that score the caballeros on the 5 spots allowed them to all jump way ahead of me. :-)

Because the game had gone so quickly, we decided to play a few light fillers, and we opened up Clans (Rio Grande Games - designer: Leo Colovinni) which I had just purchased before sitting down to play El Grande. Mark joined us as Doug bowed out to return to work.

Clans is another beautiful game with lovely bits (wooden huts) on a very pretty map board. Game play was simple and strategic, and with the added element of no one knowing what color your opponents are scoring with, made for a fun game.

Mark completed the 12th village, and intentionally scored it for the 2 back most colors, since he knew he was too far ahead to be caught. Very graceful. After adding in the bonuses we had each earned for completing villages, the final order was: Mark, Laurel, Steve, David. Not my night, I guess. :-)

This was fun, light game, that I am glad to have bought. It reminds me a lot of TransAmerica, not so much in how it plays, but it who it will appeal to. Transamerica is, right now, my favorite game to play with my children and looks like everyone in my family should enjoy Clans as well.

We closed the night out with 2 quick card games.

The first was Reiner Knizia's Loco (published by Fantasy Flight Games) which is a fast card game in which you play cards and take chips until one stack
of cards has 6 cards on it. The twist is that you score for the chips b